Charlie Hales Must Resign

By Lars Larson

Charlie Hales Must Resign. If Portland had a rock ribbed conservative Mayor like Frank Ivancie (boy do I miss his style of leadership) at about this point you’d see the lefty liberals lined up outside city hall chanting; ‘Hey hey, ho ho, I-van-cie has got to GO!”

But the City of Roses has a liberal, progressive Mayor and the Rules of Engagement in 2016 don’t allow liberals to dish on one of The tribe. So even after five continuous nights of riots, ostensibly provoked by the election of Donald J Trump, there’s no drumbeat for the lame duck mayor to resign.

Remember that the Northwest can be incredibly tolerant (but not in a good way) of politicians who commit outrageous acts, as long as they’re members in good standing of the Democrat Party (the party spearheaded by America’s first D President, the slave owning Andrew Jackson, who put American Indians on the trail of tears and blocked abolitionist legislation in congress).

4. Gov John Kitzhaber (let his girlfriend run pay for play from his office)

5. Gov Jay Inslee (accidentally released 3 thousand convicts)

6. Rep David Wu (where do you start w ole Tiger Suit Wu, Google him)

7. County Chair Jeff Conan (affair on taxpayers’ dime-n-time)

As you can see from this partial list of Northwest Democrat all-stars, there’s a high bar for removing a member of the jackass party from office.

Which brings us to Mayor Charlie Hales. Hales spent four years mismanaging the Portland Police Bureau. The agency is now under a Federal consent decree, meaning that a government 2500 mikes away is really calling the shots. His previous Police Chief, was fired only months ago because he accidentally shot (wounded but didn’t kill) a friend while drinking and Charlie kept it secret for a time. Charlie has allowed more and more outrageous (and illegal) public demonstrations without the benefit of permits and planning.

The demonstrators themselves are a piece of work. They often can’t articulate what they want, who they’re angry with or what it would take to satisfy them. Black Lives Matter seems to want all police disarmed, criminals excused of responsibility for their actions and an officer lynched anytime the mob demands. Ditto for Stand Up, Don’t Shoot PDX, a group whose very name was drawn from lies about an incident where a criminal was shot after he assaulted a cop and tried to assault him a second time.

Consider the group “Portland’s Resistance” which staged the five nights of riots after Donald Trump’s election. It’s fronted by Greg McKelvey who came on my radio show twice last week to respond.

He gave me a list of PR’s demands, including:

1. Rent control & ban no cause evictions (city/state issue)

2. Transparency in city Gov’t (city)

3. Acknowledge we live on stolen land (who knows)

4. Safe locations for the homeless (city)

5. Get Nestle out of the Gorge (state & Cascade locks issue and CS favors Nestle)

6. None of this has anything much to do with Trump’s election, but you wouldn’t know that from local news coverage.

Reporters who can’t engage in critical thinking and ask the following:

1. Who’s protesting

2. What do they want

3) Why is this about Trump

Since I’m not constrained by membership in the corrupt Democrat Party (home of Hillary pay to play, cheated Sanders, etc) I’m happy to call for Hales to step down early and hand it over to Mayor elect Ted Wheeler.

Here’s the Bill of Particulars:

1. Hales has failed as police commissioner

2. Hales allowed years of damaging no permit protests

3. the last week of protests have put lives at risk, done $1m in direct damage

4. Hales aided and abetted the protests by releasing a post election statement openly disparaging voters who cast ballots for Trump (Hales official statement) “This is a bad day for our country, a sad day, in which the values of love and tolerance have been repudiated by the voters in the United States of America.”

5. Hales pathetic demand Friday for protesters to get the permits that Hales waived for four years begged the question “Or else what Charlie? You’re going to send us a strongly worded protest?”

Charlie’s plaintive whining appeal to the lawless Friday was followed by two more nights of dangerous and damaging riots and tonight, as I write this, there’s another one cranking up.

I’m frankly amazed that Portland’s business community hasn’t demanded and end to this because this past week has to have cost them a bundle in lost business. Just remember that Seattle City Council member Shama Sawant has demanded protests all the way to the inauguration in late January. If this continues through Christmas it won’t surprise me to see law abiding customers abandon downtowns around the Northwest to the drug dealers and drunks, the street dwellers and of course the crowds of protesters.